PROJECT NATURECONNECT
Institute of Global
Education
Special NGO Consultant
to the United Nations Economic and Social Council
CREATING MOMENTS THAT
LET EARTH TEACH
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Orientation Course:
Psychological
Elements of Global Citizenship
... ©Copyright 1996 Michael J. Cohen
... ...... - open to all applicants,
... .......- transferable to most
programs,
... .......- academic or professional
credit optional,
... .......- financial aid available
... This educating and counseling with
nature course fulfills the requirements
... for the following courses:
Greenwich University Applied Ecopsychology/Integrated Ecology Department
ORIENTATION COURSE ECO 500 1 creditPortland State University Graduate School Extended Studies.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP 1 Credit
Educating and Counseling with Nature Prerequisite/replacement CourseAkamai University Applied Ecopsychology Institute
ORIENTATION COURSE ECO 500 1 creditInternational University for Professional Studies (44728)
ECO 504: PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP 1 of 6 CreditsInstitute of Global Education, Webstrings.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
Required for membership in good standing and admission to the cooperative.University of California, Santa Barbara, Environmental Studies
PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
Honors Course
Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship
The Natural Systems Thinking Process
Counseling, Healing and Educating with Nature
- The science of communicating with natural systems
- The restoration of Earth's intelligence within us
- The art of thinking with Nature
Can you afford to ignore this seldom recognized phenomenon?
"Most relationships, healing and professions that are genuinely connected with Nature are more successful, lasting and responsible than those isolated from Nature."
The Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) presented in this self-guiding course enables us to hear and understand Nature's wise, sensory voice and thereby improve our personal and professional life. It helps us use new ways to participate in resolving any challenge we face, be it global, local or within us.
NSTP works beautifully because the natural world is a beautiful perfection of its own of which we are part. Nature contains relationship intelligences that prevent it from producing garbage. Everything in Nature belongs, an attribute of unconditional love.
Natural systems and nature-connected people seldom cause or suffer our greatest troubles: pollution, abusiveness and war; apathy, disease and overpopulation. As part of Nature we inherit this intelligence. However, our excessively Nature separated lives teach us to subdue it as we learn to conquer Nature in the name of progress, winning and economics.
The Natural Systems Thinking Process is an advanced educational tool, a social technology that helps contemporary people safely make genuine sensory contact with authentic Nature.
- It enables us to consciously restore Nature's balanced intelligence into our thinking, relationships and spirit.
- It empowers us to realize our deeper hopes and ideals, to more responsibly deal with problems, including those we ordinarily might not address.
- It provides us with readily available, teachable, ways to connect to "higher power" in Nature, backyard or back country.
People who use and teach NSTP benefit from a critical component that is normally missing from our thinking, and wellness. Our occupation and relationships improve along with our credibility, global citizenship and happiness.
About the course author:
Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished World Citizen Award, Ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D., is a Director of the Institute of Global Education, a special NGO consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, where he coordinates the Integrated Ecology Department and Project NatureConnect. He also serves on the faculty of Greenwich University, the International University of Professional Studies and Portland State University. Dr. Cohen has founded several sensory environmental education programs, conceived the 1985 National Audubon Society Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism," and is the award winning author of six books including Reconnecting With Nature, Einstein's World, and Well Mind, Well Earth.
Course Description:
Discover how our excessive separation from nature stressfully dismembers our sentient inner nature and produces our psychologically bonded "unsolvable" problems. Learn to reverse this destructive process. Master thoughtful nature reconnecting activities that dissolve stress by satisfying our deepest natural curiosity, loves and spirit. This course scientifically teaches lasting, hands-on, education, counseling and leadership skills that feelingly tap the "higher power" wisdom of nature's creation process. Its email and telephone contacts between course members let nature help us nurture warm interpersonal relationships, wellness and responsibility.
Course Fee: $35.00
APPLICATION: For a course application form select here. Once you have completed the application, you will be given instructions on how to proceed with the course.
Course Overview:
THE ECOPSYCHOLOGY OF EDUCATING
AND COUNSELING WITH NATURE
Updated from PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, May-June 1994
From the druids of the Celtic forests to the great tribes of American Indians, people have sought balance, peace and wisdom by living according to the laws of Mother Nature.
Unfortunately, this century will be remembered for unprecedented exploitation of nature--and widespread psychological disturbance of individuals.
No coincidence to Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D., pioneer of what he calls integrated ecology or applied ecopsychology. A synthesis of ecology and psychology, integrated ecology proposes that both the destruction of the Earth's environment and people's isolation, stress and dysfunction stem from a fundamental denial of our connection to nature. And by psychologically reconnecting with nature, we reverse our psychological disorders.
Western civilization emphasizes only the faculties of sight, reason, and language, forcing most of us to suppress our natural senses -
-all 53 of them, by Cohen's reckoning. Among them: hunger, thirst, compassion; color, sex, place; trust, belonging, intuition; community, nurturing and motion. Each is a natural attraction form of love that sentiently connect sus to the world; we think with them to make sense. Spending over 95% of our lives cloistered and indoors leaves these natural sensory connections excessively wanting; human dysfunction and evils -- cigarette smoking, greed, dependencies, violence -- naturally follow to help fill our sensory void and frustrations.
Cohen is not a lone hunter of the bond between man and nature. According to Pulitzer-Prize winning sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D., of Harvard, people have an inherent biological need to be in contact with the out-of-doors. He calls it "biophilia", and believes that nature may hold the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive, and even spiritual satisfaction. Our childhood love of animals and natural myths and fairy tales may be early evidence of our basic affinity for nature and its instructive and healing properties.
Counseling and building responsible relationships by reconnecting with Nature? Cohen has devised therapeutic home study training manuals, workshops, on-site and e-mail/correspondence courses, discussion groups and degree programs whose activities, in backyards or back country, re-create many beneficial relationships enjoyed by earlier hunting, gathering, and communal living peoples. In the American Psychological Association Journal "The Humanistic Psychologist" (Vol. 21, No. 3) and other professional publications, he reports that while on these education programs community spirit and responsibility grows, participant's personality and eating disorders subside, learning and other cognitive abilities improve, and violence and prejudice dissolve. His participants learn to do, own and teach unforgettable nature connecting activities that produce these results throughout their lives. Gradually, a deep environmental literacy evolves that rejuvenates their natural senses, balance and joy.
From his home base at the Institute of Global Education, a special public education NGO consultant to the United Nations Department Economic and Social Council, Cohen offers books, workshops, training and degree programs and information about ecologically oriented education and therapeutic methods.
Visit a description of the course outcome.
APPLICATION: For a course application form select here. Once you have completed the application, you will be given instructions on how to proceed with the course.
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Course Specifications:
- Open to all interested persons; transferable to most academic programs and professional training requirements; credit optional
- May be used in Distance Education Ph.D. and M.S. Degrees via email
- 8-16 days in length (minimum);
- Begins on the first and 15th day of each month, or by appointment;
- A consensus based time schedule is planned by course members;
- Enjoy a supportive 4-6 person interact study group via email;
- Credit optional: transferable graduate or undergraduate credit or professional clock hours.
- Post-course internships available.
- This email/correspondence course is part of a subsidized Natural Systems Thinking Process course and online degree program offered by Project NatureConnect. It uses self-guiding materials found entirely on internet sites..(Optionally, you may use the books "Natural Systems Thinking Process "and/or "Reconnecting With Nature" in conjunction with the course and get more out of it, as well as be able to continue the program independently.) The course starts whenever you would like to proceed with an available interact study group.
NOTE: A prerequsite for this course is required to optimize its effectiveness. If you are signing up for the course you may begin the prerequsite material now while you are waiting for the course to start. http://www.rockisland.com/~process/5grnchdprerqust.html
Course Fees and recommended financial contributions
A donation of $35.00 (refundable*) is requested to help cover Course organizational, administrative and instructional costs. It includes eligibility for facilitator internships, degree programs, scholarships, participation in the next level (Introductory) Course, .
If your think you may want to get a degree in this field, you may save $90 by first applying to the degree program. Details are found on the application form and at
the degree website.NOTE: scholarships, payment terms, work study, credit and financial aid are available.
CREDIT OPTION: An additional $47.00 is required if you want to obtain transferable graduate or undergraduate credit to non-IGE degree programs. Credit transfer is automatic into the IGE programs
Two Textbooks are recommended but not required. The basic text for the course is on the website as part of the course when you take it. You may download it to read it offliine.
A course fee of $35.00 is required from students receiving credit for the course.
*This fee is refunded to all course participants who intern and then co-facilitate the course.
APPLICATION: For a course application form select here. Once you have completed the application, you will be given instructions on how to proceed with the course.
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